Reigning Middleweight king, Israel Adesanya, will take on boxing specialist, Sean Strickland, this Saturday (Sept. 9, 2023) at UFC 293 inside Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney, Australia.
There are perks to being the most active champion on UFC’s roster, the man known for clearing out the Top 5. Adesanya lost last year to ultimate rival, Alex Pereira, sure, but his status as an active and dominant champion scored him the immediate rematch! There, he earned both his vindication and title with a remarkable knockout.
Now, his status allows Adesanya to look down the rankings and elevate Strickland as a challenger. He feels like a complete non-threat to “Stylebender,” but since Adesanya has beaten most everyone else and Dricus du Plessis is injured, how can anyone complain? Adesanya gets his softball, and the belt most likely gets defended once more.
Let’s take a closer look at the champion’s skill set:
Striking
In his five years on UFC’s roster, Adesanya has built a strong argument for himself as the best kickboxer in UFC history. Rangy, powerful and exceptionally crafty, Adesanya forces opponents to play his game.
Whether he’s looking to initiate or counter, Adesanya starts at kicking range, where he’ll be showing lots of feints and scoring with kicks. On the whole, mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters feint with punches fairly often, and the good ones show takedown feints, too. However, few have learned the value of a good feint with the hips.
Adesanya hip feints constantly, quite literally thrusting his hips at opponents to give the impression that a kick is coming. It’s low energy and safe, often a set up for counters. Should his opponent take the bait and attempt to throw a punch, Adesanya is likely too far back and in perfect position to counter. Once Adesanya lands a hard kick, it’s difficult not to respect the hip feint.
After his foe respects the feint, Adesanya will build from it. He’ll feint with his hips, draw out a defensive reaction, then blast the kick. In a confusingly similar manner (for his opponents), Adesanya can actually lift his leg to show the kick and instead take a big step into the opposite stance, where he’ll rip a hard kick or stab a one-two combination.
In his second victory over Robert Whittaker, Adesanya employed all his usual tricks to win a decision. In the first round, however, he knocked Whittaker down in a really brilliant display of feinting to freeze an opponent. Showing the power kick feint two or three times, Adesanya closed distance while his opponent waited for the blow to come. Instead, Adesanya sent a crisp cross straight down the middle, stunning the Aussie.
In the rematch versus Marvin Vettori, Adesanya used the threat of his right leg to set up low kicks against the Southpaw. After establishing his right leg as a weapon with couple solid digs to the body, Adesanya would raise his right knee, step into Southpaw himself, then cleave a left kick direct to the outside thigh. Often, Southpaws are less accustomed to having to defend outside low kicks, and the strikes are more damaging as a result.
On the whole, Adesanya is not a fighter who usually works in long combinations. Really, it’s usually one or two punches, occasionally followed by a kick. He’s able to get away with throwing shorter combinations because he feints and reads opponents so well. He understands how they’re moving and where they’ll be, which also makes it easier to land a flashy technique like the jump spinning back kick or question mark kick.
Against Jared Cannonier, Adesanya was especially careful to avoid long pocket exchanges. Instead, he did a lot of pot-shotting with his kicks and left hand. While Orthodox, he would feint his hips and snap the jab. Then, he’d switch Southpaw. From the left-handed stance, Adesanya was still doing most of his work by throwing the left straight down the line, now as a cross. However, he did a lot more hand-fighting with his right hand. Very often, he was crowding Cannonier’s lead hand, disrupting his money punch right hook. When Cannonier engaged in the hand fight, Adesanya would fold over elbow strikes.
One of the common ways Adesanya scores is to present his foe with a seemingly easy target, pull back and counter. By leaning forward (sometimes with his hands by his waist), Adesanya brings his head forward but keeps his legs back. The second Adesanya see his foe’s shoulder twitch, “Stylebender” can yank his head back out of range, watch his opponent come up short, and return fire.
Notably, Adesanya always retreats without breaking stance, which makes it easier to fire back a counter right hand. This was most visible opposite Whittaker in the first fight, as Adesanya repeatedly blocked the wide swings of the Australian without losing his footing. As a result, he was able to fire back hard uppercuts from either side while his opponent attempted to regain his positioning (GIF).
Adesanya’s back-and-forth war with Kelvin Gastelum was a hugely informative fight. It highlighted a pair of pretty invaluable traits: the ability to adjust and smart strike selection.
The first round did not go well to Adesanya. His strategy seemed to be to focus mostly on counter punching, but Gastelum is incredibly fast. It’s difficult to counter punch a faster man — Gastelum was able to score his heavy left hand too consistently, and one even hurt Adesanya.
Adesanya adjusted in the second by shifting into a more offensive strategy. He began really stepping forward with power kicks, smartly ripping his right kick into the Southpaw’s lead leg and mid-section. He shifted back to his fundamentals, relying heavily on the right kick to do damage. As a result, his counter punches began to land with better consistency, as Gastelum’s speed was diminished by the body/leg work. Plus, Gastelum was more likely to lunge forward when getting blasted by kicks, whereas earlier he was able to slip his way into the pocket.
Oddly enough, his pair of MMA fights versus Alex Pereira followed a somewhat similar course. Even in the first bout, he fought really well against Pereira. He consistently out-landed the Brazilian and was ahead on the scorecards for good reason. He stunned Pereira in the first, and it wasn’t until his legs failed him in the fifth — due both to checked kicks and Pereira’s own low kicks — that he was trapped along the fence for an extended period of time and battered.
In the rematch, “Stylebender” once again turned to a more offensive strategy. He put a lot more of his energy into blasting round kicks, most typically the Southpaw left kick to the liver or lead thigh. In general, he prioritized body shots. Adesanya was more willing to take his cross to the body, occasionally even extending his combinations to double up hitting the mid-section. That’s a smart tactic against a man known for cutting a lot of weight.
Standing his ground was the other half of his increased aggression. Pereira is a man who thrives off presence, standing in front of his opponent in an imposing fashion and getting in their face with terrifying power shots. An understandable but ill-advised reaction to his offense is to cover up and get defensive, which only makes it easier for “Poatan” to let his strikes fly.
Adesanya bit down on his mouthpiece and fired back. It worked (GIF)!
Another range tactic in Adesanya’s arsenal that is more common among excellent kickboxers is hand trapping. He’s quite willing to reach out and jam up one of his opponent’s hands, which can lead to a lot of different offensive opportunities for Adesanya. Often, he’ll occupy a hand then blast a kick, but he’ll commonly grab the wrist and use that moment to take an angle. Against Brad Tavares, Adesanya repeatedly used hand traps to land elbows (GIF), a favorite strategy of Jon Jones.
Defensively, Adesanya is hugely confident in his range control. His usual reach advantage largely limits his foe’s options, meaning he only has to be prepared to defend against a handful of techniques. It’s much easier to pull off beautiful slips and rolls (GIF) when his opponent can only hope to reach him with straight punches and maybe a kick. Four-ounce gloves mean that it’s always a risk to fight with hands low, but Adesanya’s defense is still pretty great.
Wrestling
Adesanya’s wrestling abilities have grown with remarkable speed. His first two UFC fights showed some decent fundamentals and the correct scrambling mentality, but he was still taken down multiple times by fighters nowhere near as talented as Kelvin Gastelum and Derek Brunson, neither of whom found any success trapping Adesanya on the mat.
In his last bout with Pereira, Adesanya scored the first takedown of his UFC career from the body lock. In truth, Pereira’s attempts to step across the body and throw Adesanya pretty much gave away the takedown. Once on top, however, Adesanya did some nice work with his wrist control, really keeping Pereira trapped in bottom position and scoring some good lands in the process.
Adesanya fights tall, and as such, it’s easier to get deep on his hips, which is generally a very bad sign for takedown defense. Against Blachowicz, this is where his trouble really began, as Blachowicz patiently waited for his opportunity to time the double. Adesanya was caught tall and off-guard, and at that point, it was too late to stop his drive.
At Middleweight, however, Adesanya has proven to have very strong hips, one of those invaluable assets that’s difficult to explain technically. It’s quite noticeable though, as Adesanya was able to circle his hips back and sprawl even when Gastelum secured a strong grip below the butt.
Length helps quite a bit in many ways. It may be easier to get on Adesanya’s legs, but he’s going to bounce on one leg and be difficult to pick up into the air. Plus, he’s likely punching his opponent in the face mid-takedown attempt, which complicates things plenty. In his rematch vs. Vettori, Adesanya had few issues stopping the vast majority of Vettori’s shots along the fence, getting a wide base to stymie his foe’s attempts.
Whittaker found decent success in off-balancing Adesanya with his takedowns in the rematch. Adesanya again proved very difficult to hold down, however, as jumping the back of such a lanky fighter can be a tricky proposition.
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
Adesanya hasn’t done a ton of jiu-jitsu inside the cage because his focus has been on defending takedowns and scrambling back up quickly. However, the first look at his mat work came against a talented wrestler in Gastelum in the fifth round of a crazy war — and it was still strong technique (GIF).
In one prolonged exchange, Adesanya first countered a takedown attempt with a high-elbow guillotine, forcing Gastelum to fall to his back to defend. Adesanya did fall victim to Gastelum’s excellent arm roll and wind up on his back soon after, but he immediately threw up a triangle choke. He was able to secure a good angle, but his lock was over his own foot rather than shin, which does alleviate the pressure a bit. He wasn’t able to finish the submission, but forcing Gastelum on the defensive with submissions late in the fight was still a promising sign for Adesanya’s overall grappling ability.
Against Blachowicz, Adesanya definitely made some mistakes. Notably, he spent a lot of time in half guard, tying up Blachowicz’s leg while remaining flat on his back. Essentially, he was trapping himself on bottom position. Now, it’s much easier said than done against a large and experienced grappler like the former Light Heavyweight champion, but Adesanya’s inability to create space from his back really cost him any chance at rallying late in the fight. Once he was back at Middleweight against Vettori and Whittaker, Adesanya was never held down for long.
Conclusion
There are fresh opponents for Adesanya at 185 pounds, but neither of them are fighting on Saturday night. As it stands, this should be a fairly simple title defense for “Stylebender,” hopefully setting him up for a more interesting challenge next.
Andrew Richardson, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu brown belt, is a professional fighter who trains at Team Alpha Male in Sacramento, California. In addition to learning alongside world-class talent, Andrew has scouted opponents and developed winning strategies for several of the sport’s most elite fighters.
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